Closet Sci-Fi Geek

Battlestar Galactica Meets Planet of the Apes

I had one of those lazy Sundays where I just got caught up on Battlestar Galactica…from season three right into season four. There’s something to be said for watching the whole lot at once - you aren’t constantly waiting for those incessant cliffhangers.

And how about that ending, eh? Well, I sure didn’t expect the kind of happy earth reception we had for the original series, where the kids got to play a baseball game with their super jumping skills thanks to the gravity differential. No, this earth was a bit darker.

I was wondering, actually, when they would place our earth in the BSG timeline. Would it be in our early history or in our future? Obviously, the writers chose our future. I think the only thing that could have possibly improved on BSG’s mid-season finale would have been if we got to see a shot of the Statue of Liberty buried in the sand, with a bunch of clothed apes coming out to meet the crowd.

Then Dr. Zaius (the ape) could greet Dr. Gaius (Baltar) and we’d find out that the apes were actually cylon-ape hybrids all along. Or something like that.

Torchwood’s Owen Harper

WARNING: SPOILER if you haven’t watched the series recently! So am I the only one who will not be missing Owen on Torchwood? I could never get his appeal. Somehow he was this sex-god with women, and every woman on Torchwood was in love with him, but he was just so unappealing to me, physically and personality-wise. But where Torchwood really lost it for me was when Owen became the living dead man. So somehow, his body was dead, and he couldn’t recover from a wound, and yet he was able to SPEAK, which meant he was breathing. This was some of the worst, unscientific sci-fi nonsense I have seen in ages. I was really glad when they just finally offed him. Farewell, Owen, but sorry, I’m not going to miss you.

Starfleet

In the DVD Player

The Tomorrow People, Thames Television (A&E Home Video)

Starring Nicholas Young, Peter Vaughan-Clarke, and Elizabeth Adare

For those of us who tuned into “Nickleodeon” on weekday afternoons in the 1980’s, the US-formatted DVD release of “The Tomorrow People” is a blast to our Gen-X retro past. Yeah, the special effects were cheesy and the acting amateurish in that special British sci-fi way, but the stories were powerful and spoke to those of us who felt “different.” For those who value style over substance in a sci-fi series, just compare the forty-plus year run of “Doctor Who” to the twenty-seven year run of the Roddenberry “Trek” franchise. Which one is still currently in production? That’s right. “Doctor Who.” And the Lucasing of TOS Trek doesn’t count.

The premise of “The Tomorrow People” is one explored extensively in the Marvel Comics universe: people developing powers through natural mutation and evolution. In the series, the powers manifest themselves at the onset of puberty in a traumatic process called “breaking out,” a metaphor for the whole junior high experience if ever I heard one. While powers acquired in the Marvel universe are usually singular and specific (laser eyes, control of the weather, etc.), the powers displayed by the Tomorrow People include telekinesis, telepathy, and teleportation. Each of the People display all three abilities, but some have a greater degree of speciality in one of the other. One characters is adept at picking locks, while another is able to project images of ghosts through telepathy.

 A mainstay of the series is the characters’ ability to teleport, or “jaunt,” a term borrowed from the novel The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester. Just by thinking about it, they can teleport to any location they can imagine. I never did get why they had to be mechanically assisted by the “jaunting belts.” I guess it so the “TIM” character could play a greater role in the series. TIM is the biomechanical computer, voiced by Phillip Gilbert. Gilbert’s is one of the classic sci-fi computer/robot voices, right up there with Roddy McDowell, Majel Barrett Roddenberry, Douglas Rain, and Dick Tufeld.

The episodes in the DVD sets are presented in their original 30-minute “serial” format, with opening and closing credits between each episode. While this makes for disjointed viewing of the entire story and can be tedious when viewing the “flashback” sequences from the previous episode, the format keeps the entire set true to the original series. The lack of original series artwork on the box makes it hard to spot on the shelf. For some reason, A&E elected to go with original art on the box and DVD cases.

It’s a set worth owning. Here’s to A&E for finally bringing this series to DVD on our shores.

LarryJP

Lost’s Season Finale

Spoilers ahead…I just have to say I am continually impressed at how well the folks at Lost are doing with keeping the show fresh and intriguing after so many years. The finale was just heartstopping, and the show just keeps getting weirder in a good way.

A few thoughts:

1. The island can be moved? Deep underground in a strange cave with ancient markings? And when it’s moved, the cave goes from being bitterly cold to desert heat? Well, for anyone who questioned whether Lost was sci-fi, this certainly answered that.

2. “I see dead people.” Hurley’s seeing dead people, Michael sees Jack’s dead father, Miles hears dead people…is this still a function of sci-fi or the paranormal? Are we in some sort of pseudo virtual reality world?

3. Bunnies getting transported forward in time…space/time continuum…aaaaaaiiiiieeeee…

My head is still reeling, and still I can’t come up with the Unified Lost Theory That Explains Everything…

PS Did you know that the real Jeremy Bentham’s corpse is on display in a wooden box in England?

Samurai Pizza Cats

If you woke up tomorrow with a different set of memories, would you still be you?

A while back I watched A Scanner Darkly. While this is a good enough film (and yet another cinematic adaptation of a Philip K Dick novel), it’s certainly not the best film I’ve seen about fractured identities and perspectives that are warped by drugs or technology. Total Recall has much more fun with the

topic. Based on “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” by Philip K. Dick, it raises the fundamental question - do memories define character? If your memories tell you that you are a gun-slinging, ass-kicking spy; does that make you a gun-slinging, ass-kicking spy? Bladerunner (based on Philip K Dick’s, ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) takes a more meditative approach to the topic. Is the film-noiresque hero, Deckard, real or not? Is he a human or is he a replicant who has forgotten that he is artificial. The random selection of antique photos on Deckard’s piano gives us a clue. Are they a record of Deckard’s past or are they a badly constructed history; a collation of tenuously linked memories. Then there’s the unicorn dream he keeps having. Again, is this his subconscious at work or another memory, implanted by Tyrell Corporation? Similarly, if you can hide memories, can you hide a personality? Take Talia Winters from Babylon 5. One minute she is a mild mannered telepath, minding her own business as best she can, the next minute her ’sleeper’ personality has been activated and she’s a cold-blooded killer. Ditto with The Long Kiss Goodnight. Amiable housewife becomes professional killer. There are many many many other examples. But just one question really. If you woke up tomorrow with a completely different set of memories, would you still be you?

A Few News Tidbits & Thoughts

Good news: Reaper and Eli Stone have been renewed! I was a bit worried for both (Reaper seemed to be very much on the bubble) and I am glad to see both will come back. Reaper is not high art, but it’s fun, with some really great moments. I have unfortunately not been able to keep up with Reaper as much as I’d like this past season due to all the scheduling changes and writer’s strikes and…my life, but I plan to catch up on all the episodes before next season.

Eli Stone has become hands down my favorite new show, surpassing even my other new favorite Pushing Daisies. (Pushing Daisies may creep back up again, however, once I start watching it again.)

Jericho fans are pushing SciFi to pick up the series…of course, SciFi will probably do the stupid thing and ignore them. Once again, Bonnie Hammer is going on about expanding the network to reach more than adolescent geeky boys. I guess this is one of the reasons why they don’t have spaceships anymore?

Excuse me, Bonnie..I am a 30something female, relatively attractive (or so I’m told), who does yoga and also happens to like spaceships. Please stop stereotyping women by suggesting we need “relationships” to get into a show!

I am so itching for new spaceship shows that I’m thinkly fondly of sci-fi gone by. Even sci-fi I didn’t like that much. I used to find Space: Above and Beyond a bit too shoot-em-up and not enough aliens…but I’m really dying over here to see SOME SPACESHIPS for a change, and now I look back on the days of Space: Above and Beyond, Star Trek franchises, and Babylon 5 with much fondness. Ah, the 90s.

Finally: Welcome to our newest contributor, LarryJP!

Mighty Orbots

Here’s a TV series I loved as a kid in the early eighties. Mighty Orbots was similar to Starfleet in that it involved a bunch of different machines that joined up to make one big, kick arse robot. But in this case, the machines are the characters themselves – Tor, Bort, Crunch, Bo and Boo. Crunch was my favourite (the blue fat one of the left). He’d eat anything, including rocks. There’s something about chomping through granite like it’s chocolate that’s really cool.

I used to almost run the kilometre of gravel road home from school to catch Mighty Orbots, and dreamed of us having the latest of luxury inventions, the mystical ‘video recorder’ so that I could record them and watch them again. Alas we got our Black Diamond some time after Mighty Orbots finished screening.

While Starfleet was a Japanese production over-dubbed for the English market, Mighty Orbots was a joint American/Japanese production. I only realise this now, looking back, but I must have had quite a thing for the Japanese aesthetic.

David Tennant on Graham Norton

This is one of the funniest things I have ever seen. Make sure you watch the middle section where the clueless guy gets into the Tardis…I laughed so hard I cried!